Cauterize
by Smarty Cat
Summary: [Oneshot Ficlet] Roy can't burn them. Bad enough for him to kill, but to eradicate all traces of them as if they'd never been? She knows he can't. ALL comments and criticisms are welcome.


This is the first FMA piece I've thrown out to the public so you probably shouldn't expect too much. I'm trying to get back into writing creatively after a long absence and it's surprisingly hard. This fic is constructed around the subject of "scar(s)" and was requested a long time ago by Chihaya. It isn't set at any particular time during the manga (it is manga-based), and I'm a bit behind on what's been happening in recent chapters, but hopefully it's vague enough that canon accuracy won't really be an issue. Feel free to point it out if I've majorly deviated from or contradicted canon, however. Concrit of all kinds is ALWAYS appreciated!

**Disclaimer: ** Fullmetal Alchemist is the creation of Hiromu Arakawa, serialized in Monthly Shounen Gangan, animated by Studio BONES, and distributed in America exclusively under license by Viz, LLC and FUNimation. I own nothing.

_For Chihaya _

**Cauterize **

by

**Smarty Cat**

Strike. Heft. Throw.

She ignores the strange half-stiffness pulling down her back and shoves the burning of worn muscles out of her mind.

Pain means feeling; pain means life.

Scars are the true medallions of battle and war.

Strike. Heft. Throw.

When compared to the resiliency of still living flesh and surrounding skin grown exquisitely sensitive to make up for the sensation lacked by the epicenter, what value does the cold kiss of shaped metal possess?

Survival is the greatest victory of all.

The dead don't scar.

Sweat runs down her back, slick, itching, and oppressive, tracing the broken sigil hidden beneath her clothes. The dust she stirs cakes into a thin mud on her exposed skin.

Strike. Heft. Throw.

In the distance she sees the teams collecting their soldiers' insignias and personal possessions to send back to their families. The diseases of the region pose too great a risk to send home the soldiers themselves.

They will stay here and lie for eternity with dead civilians and enemy combatants among them, and she will help to cover the earth with the burial scars of their mass graves. Not because she has to, not because she is ordered to, but because she will.

The sun beats down mercilessly, and she envies the men who can strip off their clothes and keep going.

Strike.

She shoves sodden hair away from her face, dizzy and swaying with sweat.

A white gloved hand at her elbow steadies her and withdraws newly marred by the mud of her skin.

Roy.

Sad eyes flash at her and she is fortified.

Heft. Throw.

Aching muscles once again settle into a familiar rhythm.

When it's deep enough, drag or roll the bodies in.

Strike. Heft. Throw.

Fill the hole back in again.

She is not the only weary soldier still toiling. Bitterness and grumbling reach her ears. Why doesn't he just set fire to it all? Make one giant funeral pyre and be done with it?

She looks over and does not recognize them. In a time of reorganization and constant casualties, it is not unusual-a failure on her part but not unusual. She wonders. Are they new to this? Have they never experienced the scent of burning flesh that once belonged to a comrade? Or are they so weary and jaded that it is no longer a horror?

Strike. Heft. Throw.

Roy can't burn them. Can't. Can't. Can't. The flame alchemist's conscience can't stand it.

Bad enough for him to kill, but to eradicate all traces of them as if they'd never been?

He can't; he can't; she knows he can't. Enemies, civilians, allies, doesn't matter. Follow and protect. Always.

Strike. Heft. Throw.

Can't. Can't. Can't.

Better the great, ghastly scars of graves across the ground than ashes scattered to the winds to be quickly forgotten.

She does this for him because he can't, because it is her job to support him and to compensate for all his weaknesses.

She watches his back disappear into the medic tent, watches his hands flex and twist like broken creatures and his shoulders set themselves. Very soon there will be screaming, and alcohol aplenty tonight.

But they will be alive.

Strike. Heft. Throw.

The dead don't scar. They just leave scars.


End file.
